77 KZ650 is up and running

Thanks to this forum and it's users I have made a ton of progress on this particular bike. It was in very poor shape when I got it picture of it in the back of my truck after making the trek back from California. It belonged to a previous boss of mine he made a really dumb decision and killed himself and I don't have all the backstory unfortunately.

I got it running(engine) a couple years back, began working on it ran out of money and time. I was living in an apartment and didn't have a good place close by to work on it so it got parked inside. Bought a house and it moved with me. It sat for another year not being worked on until a couple months ago.

I had parts sitting around from when I started working on it before. Unbeknownst to me at the time I did not realize it had vm29 carbs and all the parts I had were for what the bike would have had stock(vm24s?). I managed to determine what the carbs I had were and located parts and repaired them, thanks to tons of information from this forum. The factory wiring harness was in bad shape and I finnaly decided it was time to gut it and build my own and once again found a stripped down wiring diagram that was helpful in that aspect.

I don't expect anyone to read anything that follows this but I wanted to express my gratitude and show you guys the ugly duckling 77 KZ650 I cobbled together using information provided by this forum and it's users. Thanks a ton to everyone here I learned a lot and now have my KZ650 registered and running. Hello from Utah!

Everything from this point on is simply what I have done to the bike.

Speedometer is a gps unit that was 60 dollars on Amazon. Serves it's purpose to tell me what speed I'm cruising at, otherwise I don't look at it much

Tach is a digital unit I picked up from autozone. It only supports 4 cylinders and since it only has a signal from one coil it reads roughly half the RPM. I marked "redline" at 5 (10k) I don't run it that high I shift right around 8 (when I'm running it hard). Again don't pay much attention to it I'm more comfortable listening to the engine.

Green leds verticaly mounted are turn signal indicators to help me remeber to turn the damn things off before I get creamed by some soccer mom in a minivan on her phone.

Blue indicator light is high beam

Blue battery bar is some alibaba battery monitor thing and it's pretty useless so far.

Leds ziptied to the handlebars are RGB. Red for oil pressure, green for neutral, yellow for both.

Headlight is a polisport universal dirtbike unit. The rest of the lighting on the bike is all from a tusk dual sport conversion kit I used since just about everything on the bike when I got it was in really poor shape.

All the paint is just rattle can metallic gray. Wax it occasionally and otherwise it covers the bare metal.

The seat was done by my old boss, I debated getting a nicer one and have decided against it. It makes me chuckle because it is pretty garbage but it has value to me and me alone.

Ride her until the wheels fall off! Thanks for the story.

Thanks for the story! Bike is definitely looking a lot better! It looks like a fun ride.

It is always good to see another KZ back on the road.